Anniversary

One year ago today, I watched him pull out of the driveway, never to live here again. I stood in the middle of my living room, and I thought to myself "It looks like a bomb went off in here". Mostly because it did. A bomb went off in my house, and my life.

Half the furniture was gone, chaos was everywhere, and I was all alone since the kids decided to spend the night in their exciting new room at Daddy's exciting new house.

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I ate cereal for dinner that night, stayed up way too late watching bad movies on the SyFy channel, and slept in the next morning for the first time in decades. Then I started cleaning and organizing, and the kids came back home. Before I knew it, the house looked great and I felt…strangely good. I was still sad, especially when I looked at Anna or David, but…relieved. And tenatively optimistic. I had a feeling, way deep down that this was all going to end up OK.

Monday morning, I woke up early and I posted my brand new status to Facebook:

I lost 195 pounds this weekend! How are you?

And ever since then, I've just kept putting one foot in front of the other. I've stumbled a bit, fallen flat on my face a few times, but I'm still here, we're all still in the house, eating regularly, and laughing a lot more. I've dealt with crisis, calamity and chaos, and I've learned plenty of new things. This weekend, I'm baking a cake just for me. I've earned it. And I'm going to eat a slice right after I fix the screen on the porch and re-grout my upstairs bathtub, but before I get into a six hour game of Monopoly with my daughter.

A year ago, I had no idea what this day would be like, or even that I'd be blogging about it for a forum as prestigious as Woman's Day. They took a chance on me, and I've learned to take chances myself. One year can be a lifetime. Now, if you'll excuse me, I'll just keep on keeping on.

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